Halting sites are for Travellers. They have facilities like showers, toilets, hot water, a place for your washing machine and electricity. The one I lived in had six bays. The bays were all full. There is only one person living there who has been there from the start of the site. The other families have come and gone. I lived in bay two. When I lived there I like the fact that if I wanted to play with someone all my cousins were there. My mother never worried about me because she knew whom I was with. We were able to swap toys with the cousins. It was easy to feed the horses because they were just beside us. Our bay was the best one because there was a ramp right beside it to slow down the cars. It was safe for the small children.
Some of the things I didn’t like were that sometimes other children would take my things and break them. It used to upset me when my things were broken or taken. My dog got killed. I had her for about four years. Some people didn’t make any effort to keep the site clean.
There is a place there that the Travellers call the pen that they keep their horses in. And when their mares is near foaling they bring them back to the pen. And if their mares have a horse foal she will usually be sold to Pat Cash.
We never pulled out for any length of time. We tended to stay in the site. But when I was young I remember we used to travel a lot. We used to go to Portarlington, Tallaght, the Heath of Marlborough. We used to go to another place with a lake nearby, but I can’t remember the name of it. We used to go the Bray as well.
Halting sites are getting a thing of the past now. In most places houses are being built. The old Travellers prefer to be out on the side of the road. They can’t live without their horses. Some of them feel that the young Travellers are forgetting about the old way of life.
Halting sites are a good thing in one way because you have facilities. But in another way it feels like you are in a jail because in some places there is big high wall around them and you can’t see out. In other places there are big high banks of clay hiding them. It feels like Travellers are being hidden away like as if people are ashamed of them. I think these walls and banks should be taken down so that a bit of light gets in. Travellers do no harm so they shouldn’t be locked in like that. Travellers should be able to grow flowers and shrubs in front of the halting sites instead. The banks of earth are unhealthy because they provide homes for rats and mice. You can never get rid of them because there are too many places for them to live and breed. It is very dangerous for children to play where rats and mice have been. Often wild cats can hide in the banks. These animals can be very dangerous. A lot of sites have barriers on the way in, which can be a good thing, because everyone and anyone can’t come in to your bay. You can be sure that when you come back, no one else will have moved into your bay. But barriers can cause problems as well because if you want to get in or out a lorry or a high van, you cant. The barriers can be dangerous because the children try to climb on them. If they fall they can get seriously injured.
Some times the electricity goes off in them and there is no way of heating bottles for babies. Halting sites need good caretakers to help keep them clean. The rent should be collected every week because sometimes a few weeks pass by and then a family might not be able to pay the whole amount when the caretaker comes to collect. Where I used to live there was a big hose. It was handy for washing the bays, but then it was cut off and there was no hose, so you had to buy your own. The new hoses didn’t fit properly and it was very difficult to wash the yards. The joints between the slabs of concrete get very dirty. Weeds grow up in them and rubbish gets caught in them and it’s very hard to keep them clean.
My new life began when my family and I moved out of the site. My Daddy bought a site and we moved our trailer onto it. Daddy applied for planning permission to build a bungalow. When the building started we had to sell the big mobile and buy a smaller one. It took a few months to build it. We finally moved in late January 2002. It felt strange living in the house at first, everything seemed so big and there was so much room. At first I thought I was going to be afraid, but when I actually moved in I wasn’t. I was so tired the first night after moving everything into the house that I fell asleep as soon as I got into bed. The day we moved in, the man who was doing the built in wardrobes was working there as well. As soon as he had each one done I was bringing the stuff. A few days after moving in we had to take out the beds to lay the carpet.
I have been living in the house now for about two months and at this stage it feels normal. I like living in the house. You don’t hear any noise. If you are asleep there is no noise to waken you. It is safer because if a fire breaks out we have a fire alarm to warn us and you would get more time to get out, than if you were in a caravan. It is much warmer because we have radiators in the rooms. When you wake up in the morning the house is lovely and warm. We always have hot water and we don’t have to wait to heat water anymore. If the electricity trips we don’t have to wait, we can just trip the switch. We have a bath now as well as a shower. I was always used to the shower, but I prefer the bath now. I have more privacy now because we all have our own rooms. If I want to watch something on telly I can go down to my own room.
My Mammy and Daddy prefer the house too. Mammy likes the house because it is so much easier for her to keep it clean. She has her own special press for her own medicines. She has a washing machine inside in the house so now she doesn’t have to go out in the cold to do the washing. When she is cleaning the windows, she can let my little sister look at telly. Life is much easier for Mammy now. Daddy likes the house because he can put his feet up when he comes home from work. He likes all the extra space. He loves to show people his video of the Wexford team from 1996.
We have a back garden now. There are lots of flowers and pots in it. Mammy likes flowers and she has big tall ones in the hall. Daddy bought her a lovely table, there’s two ducks holding up the table and there is a duck shaped lamp on the table. Daddy has a safe place to keep the mare when she is near foaling. He is always doing bits and pieces around the house and the yard.
I feel free now. If I leave my hurl outside, I know it will be there when I go back. I like being a Traveller, but I don’t feel as much like one now. I like my new life living in the house. I don’t think I will ever go back to living on a halting site again. When I have children of my own, I wouldn’t like to see anyone of them living on a halting site either. John Connors 6th Class
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I was living down where my cousin was living first. The house was lovely but it needed to be done up. We got an extension to it and when the house was done it was lovely. While the house was being done we moved into a caravan. The caravan was parked in the garden. We were living in the caravan for about two months. I didn’t like living in the caravan because there was no room in it. It was hard for Mammy to do the cooking. It was hard to do the washing up because the sink was too small. I don’t like living in caravans anyway but in the summer they are nice to go off in. I’d rather live in a house than in a caravan. The inside of caravans is nice. I was much happier when I moved back into the house. I like my room now because it’s bigger now than it was first. I have new curtains on my windows and they have all designs on them. I like all my brothers and sisters bedrooms because they are all bigger than they were before. And I like my house now because it is bigger. I like my house because there is a shower and a bath in it. I like the new windows because there used to be old wooden ones and the new ones are double-glazed with squares in them. (Margaret Connors 4th Class)
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Some of the halting sites I visit are in Clondalkin and Tallaght, Co. Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford, and Galway. My favourite site is in Co. Wicklow. I like it because there are slides and swings in it. It’s near the sea. There are houses for Travellers just across the road from the site. I would like to stay in a halting site. And then I would like to move in to a house. I would like if everyone in halting sites had the chance to get houses.
Some halting sites are good and clean, but others are full of scrap cars and things like that. Some sites have a good few showers and toilets and little kitchen. Other sites might only have one or two showers and toilets that everyone has to share, and they might not have any kitchen. The better sites have a little house in each bay area with a little kitchen and sitting room and one bedroom. And there is room for three caravans in each bay. The big children mind the younger children.
There is a new site in Clondalkin. It is very big. There are 12 or 13 bays in it. There is room for lots of caravans in each bay. There are swings and slides in it as well. It is near the shops. A bus comes to collect the children for school. The site has electricity. Each little house in each bay has water and electricity. The families are able to do all the cooking and washing in these little houses. They eat all their meals in them as well. The council provides the site with a skip for rubbish and it is emptied regularly.
Halting sites have improved life for Travellers compared
to when they used to live on the side of the road. But lots of Travellers
would still like to have houses because they are not any different to
settled people so they want to be settled too. Now some councils in
some counties are building houses for some of the Travellers. The Travellers
are grateful for this but I would like the councils to try to provide
even more houses. Larry Connors (blonde hair) 5th Class
Mobiles are very different to the houses today. I used to live in a
mobile, but now I live in a house. Although the house is better, I would
rather be travelling around Ireland. The places we would travel to are
Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Kildare, Monaghan and Londonderry. I like some
of the places we pull into because there are caravan sites in them.
And they would have a television in it.
The women do all the cooking on a gas cooker in the mobile. They boil their own food like cabbage, meat and potatoes.
In the evening the men would go fishing, if not they would go to the dogs. Later on they go home to the mobiles and watch the television for the rest of the night. They would be very warm and the beds would be warm in the mobiles. During the day the men and women would go out around selling things. Some times they would go visiting their friends and relations. (Larry Connors (dark hair) 5th Class)